Up against the wall

October 19, 2008 at 11:18 pm · Filed under Adrienne's HIV blogs

Did some filming today for Glaxo Smith Kline, the big pharmaceutical company who manufacture our meds. Arrived later than anticipated at Body Positive due to a hold up on the motorway, so didn’t have time to put my mother puckering lipstick on. This is not me swearing, although I must admit I felt like it at the time, it is the name for the new lip gloss I’d bought the day before especially for the occasion, from Boots the chemists no less, who are perhaps not familiar with the expression that goes along with the brand name of – up against the wall. I also purchased some blue eye dew drops for the, what now seems to be permanent fixture of my yellow eyes.

According to the bumf on the label, sexy mother pucker lip gloss is especially good for the ageing face, because as we get older lip tissue shrinks and flattens out with age.

“Mother Pucker is no ordinary lip gloss,” the label proclaims , “Due to it’s scientifically proven super fill microspheres that plump up the lips so that they explode in volume up to10x when they come into contact with water.”

All well and good I would imagine if I was about to swim the channel or my boat was about to sink and I didn’t have a lifebelt, but what would happen when I had a simple drink of water or a nice cup of tea? Would my lips suddenly inflate to ten times their normal size, in which case it would be more a case of PG lips than PG tips.

“Sexy mother puckers new super fill,” the label professes, “can fool your lips into looking and feeling fuller.’

Of course, I wasn’t daft and neither were my lips, I’d given it a test run the day before so I didn’t arrive for the filming looking like Lesley Ash of ‘trout pout fame,’ but to be honest, it hadn’t fooled my lips into anything. My purse possibly, into paying for it, but my lips remained stubbornly poutless. The only difference was, I think I got some on my tongue by mistake which exacerbated my slight lisp. It’s not that I have a very pronounced lisp, aside from sometimes my s’s sounding like f’s, especially on the telephone.

“Could you repeat your surname again madam?”
“Seed.”
“Thank you Mrs Feed.”
“I said Seed.”
“Theed ?”
“No f for thugar and its mith not mithiss, oh never mind, why don’t you just pith off.”

There are different kinds of lisps apparently and I am not quite sure what kind of lisp I possess – or potheth. I don’t think it’s what’s known as a Lateral lisp as according to a lisping website, a lateral or a side ways lisp can sound a bit ‘wet’ or ‘spitty’, which would be no good at all with my mother puckering lip gloss on, as it would be inflating every time I said anything with an ‘s’ in it. Good job Kate Winslet wasn’t wearing any in ‘Titanic’ when she engaged in that disgusting spitting competition with that filthy commoner Jack. Then again, maybe she was and that’s what kept her afloat, as it does also say on the label, ‘For lips that sail.’

Lisping may well come in handy then at times, but who would want lips than can sail, unless you are a lone yachtswoman becalmed on the high seas and you don’t have any wind in your sails, or anywhere else for that matter – and even if you do, there are things you can take for that, which you can also purchase from Boots the chemist.

Lisping it seems, can also be inspirational, as in the case of the legendary rock band, ‘The Cure’, when as the story goes, they were racking their brains for an innovative name for the band when a loan salesman happened to knock on the door and say, “May I offer you thumb perthonal loan advithe, thir?” and one of the band members allegedly replied: “What kind of loans are you offering?” to which the salesman’s reply was, “Thecure.”

Anyway, like the Titanic the filming went down well, although unlike Kate Winslet and that dirty Jack fellow, we didn’t get paid for our troubles. It never fails to amaze, not to mention annoy me, how people living with HIV are used time and time again for research purposes and raising awareness, but the only people who get paid or benefit financially are the researchers. Some of the questions really got me thinking though, such as how does the medication affect your quality of life and what aspects of your treatment are most important to you. The answer to the latter part of the question in relation to the meds was a clear cut case of can’t live with them, can’t live without them – and as for quality of life, well, to put it bluntly, there isn’t any.

By the time the film crew had packed up their big furry microphones and cameras and headed off to catch the train back to London, I just about made it for lunch, but was late taking my meds. The traffic back was horrendous and by the time I got home I was so knackered I fell asleep on sofa and didn’t wake up until after midnight. Because I had to fast for a hospital appointment the next day, it was by then too late to eat anything. So maybe that’s why what happened, happened. But in truth, I had been feeling off for few days, really weary and listless, so when the nurse was taking my bloods, the next thing I knew, or didn’t know to be precise, I had passed out.

As I came round from wherever I’d been and the world slowly started to swirl back into focus, the first thing I saw were my bright red shoes on the end of my spread eagled legs, which appeared to be glowing like Dorothy’s ruby slippers from the Wizard of Oz. From far, far away, from some distant land, I could hear someone singing in a high wavery voice, la la la la la la la, which could have been somewhere over the rainbow or my lovely health worker singing her strange tapping song whilst employing her EFT skills.
“I’m so sorry,” I apologized profusely, tears springing from my eyes and rolling down my clammy cheeks.
“No need to apologize,” said my health worker, ordering the nurse to clean the blood up off the floor. This made me swoon all over again and I had to be escorted bodily to a room to lie on a bed whilst my notes and last results were found and it appeared I was having a bit of what’s known in the HIV trade as a blip, probably caused said my health worker by my new meds and Billy Rubin.

Who’s Billy Rubin I wanted to know, who in my semi conscious state sounded like a Jewish scrap monger or the boy nobody wanted to sit next to at junior school, or maybe he was a friend of Billy Elliot. Whoever he was, what did he want with me? Didn’t I have enough problems as it was?

Talk about having a bit of a blip – a bit of flip out more like. But there was one thing very clear, there was no way I was going to be kept in that hospital overnight, so I quickly tried to rally myself round.
“There’s no place like home, there’s no place like home,” I repeated, clicking the heels of my red shoes together three times like Dorothy.
“Are you sure you are alright?” asked one of the nurses, probably wondering if she should contact the psychiatric ward and get me sectioned.
“Yes, I’m positive,” I replied and the weight of those words suddenly hit me like a thunderbolt causing very hot tears to erupt all over again, due to the realisation (which sometimes I forget, or at least want to forget) that yes, I am positive and I always will be and therefore blips such as these will continue to happen. The other undeniable fact that hit me was because of HIV I can no longer do the things I used to be able to do. This realisation, like the meds, is a hard pill to swallow, but I clicked my red shoes together (which incidentally I will never wear again) more forcefully this time and hotfooted the yellow brick road out of there.

Talking of red shoes, the Wizard of Oz and the eternal quest to find things like hearts, tin openers and emotions, on the Sky website they had a list of the ten steps you should take in order to find the ‘yellow brick road’ to happiness. The first step was to eat yourself happy, because you are what you eat, in which case at the moment I am a chip butty, albeit not a particularly happy (nor obviously healthy) one. The second step was to have lots of sex, which of course these days is a definite no no for me, but for the ultimate in happy sex they advocate it’s best not to use a condom, although only if you know it’s safe and you’re not worried about pregnancy. Which begs the question, how do you ever really know when it’s safe? Married people apparently are the happiest of all because they have 30 per cent more sex than single folk and probably don’t use condoms, putting them I have to say in great danger if either of the partnership is unfaithful at any time. Anyway, the ‘more sex’ statistic does not necessarily apply to most of the married couples I am familiar with, but what do I know. You would have to ask an economist. Economists have worked out that a lasting marriage equates to the happiness you’d feel if you earned an extra £50,000 a year. How on earth do they arrive at these figures? Do you think Madonna and Guy in their up and coming divorce will take that into the equation – although who gives a toss about them, certainly not me.

Step three, following Madonna’s fine example was to go to the gym, although it hasn’t done much for her happiness or her bulging biceps, at least as far as her marriage and her bulging bank account is concerned. Some doctors have even called for exercise to be offered on prescription to depressed people because it releases their endorphins. I don’t know, all these endorphins which people are keeping in captivity against their will – no wonder they are flipping out, if you’ll excuse the pun, it serves them right. Exercise, they also state, can be a very sociable activity. Well, I beg to differ; I have never felt so alone as I did peddling my exercise bike up a non existent mountain path whilst in reality staring out of the gym window at the outside wall, or on my jogging machine, jogging alone on the road to nowhere.

Step four was to have a good old belly laugh. Well, that’s more like it. I can relate to that. Laughing is really good for you, they say, because it releases even more endorphins, which can only be a good thing as due to people keeping them in captivity, they were on the verge of becoming an endangered species. Research shows that people today laugh three times less than they did in the 1950s. How do they know that? Is it those economists again? What with the current credit crunch and economic gloom, wouldn’t they be better employed keeping their eyes on the footsie instead of coming up with statistics about tickling them. They would be better off becoming footsie fans instead, although in my opinion, there are far too many already and the footsie in both senses of the word has become a national obsession.

Laughing, they say, even when you don’t find anything particularly funny, can be just as good for your happiness levels as rolling around when you hear a good joke. Try it, they suggest, although you might feel a bit silly at first. But if you prefer rolling around on a mat as opposed to the bare floorboards, there’s actually a type of yoga, called Laughter Yoga, which trains people how to laugh themselves to happiness. On their website, the lady in question describes herself as a ‘Laughologist’ and also offers Laughter Facilitation Training, where she trains others to spread laughter and happiness upon the planet, which is obviously part of the campaign to save the endorphins. She is also apparently an entertaining speaker and has given talks for Gerrards Cross Ladies Golf Club (big deal) and The Inner Wheel of Godalming, which I at first thought was some kind of weird religious sect, along with the AGM of Sacro cranial practitioners, who she’s also given a talk to.

“Lets’ do it laughing,” she proclaims, although she doesn’t say exactly what.

A typical laughter session would begin with breaking some ice, although I can’t see what’s so funny about that, you might just as well go and defrost your freezer. You may find yourself talking gibberish, she says, and even singing a song in laughology language and chanting ho, ho, ho, ha, ha, ha. You may notice, she warns us, that you might start smiling for no reason over the following days. Well, I’m not surprised.

There are no age or physical restrictions apparently to participating in a laughter session unless you have had recent surgery, a heart by-pass or are on long term medication. So that rules people living with HIV out then, although you can do it in prison.
“Laughter really is a drug – but there are very pleasant after effects!” states one satisfied HMP inmate.

If you are not incarcerated at Her Majesty’s pleasure, you can laugh your way to happiness on a weekend retreat in Wales, where after you have tried the Seven Steps to Happiness, you will emerge a new you! Why does she keep insisting there are seven steps to happiness, when Sky definitely says it’s ten? Perhaps she knows a short cut. But before you try to reserve a place, sorry she appologizes, but it’s fully booked. However, she suggests, why not try a laughter holiday in sunny Dahab on the red sea instead.

Why not indeed. After reading people who’ve tried these holidays or sessions comments, I might just sign up for one myself.

“The highlight for me,” states one satisfied customer from Wimbledon, “was looking in on a laughter therapy session with twenty people strutting around the room impersonating chickens.”

Maybe she should sign up for one of the uplifting laughter holidays (as in necks possibly) in Turkey.

“Since I did the course, I do the Ho, Ho, Ho, Ha, Ha, Ha and it sets me off again” says a woman from Workshop (as in laughter presumably) in North Wales.

“Ho Ho Hope we can do this again,” say the stylists of a hairdressing salon, also in Wimbledon.

Step five to finding happiness, according to Sky, was to keep an animal (a chicken or a turkey perhaps – or at least a chicken or a turkey impersonator?) around the house. A study by the University of Minnesota found that having a cat is such a calming influence that it cuts the risk of having a heart attack or a stroke by almost half. In another study it was found that dog owners tend to have lower cholesterol, plus, having a loyal pet such as a dog or cat, or even a chicken or turkey, but only if its loyal of course, makes you feel loved and needed.

Step six was to find God. A study which was presented to the Royal Economic Society, earlier this year (it’s those pesky economists again) showed that religious people are better able to cope with major life traumas, like divorce. Not, I would have thought if you are a catholic.

Step seven was to get your glad rags on, but I’m surprised those money conscious economists didn’t say anything about all the handbags that your granddad also had to sweat to buy, or even Rod Stewart for that matter. Ever wondered why Goths and emos look so miserable they ask? Not really, but apparently it’s because they wear black all the time. Instead, they advise, we should all wear bright colours. A psychological study, probably carried out by those nosy economists again, who probably also work for Primark, has shown that people who wear bright colours elicit positive emotions in other people, while those who dress in dark colours have the opposite effect. People who dress in bright colours, they also sagely advise, are also far less likely to be run over!

If you want to feel happy according to the principles of the ancient Chinese system Feng Shui, you should choose clothes in shades of red, orange and yellow. Although, I say, if you really want to avoid getting run over, you should choose red, orange and green instead, then you could be mistaken for a set of traffic lights.

Step eight was to get some winter sun. Seasonal affective disorder otherwise known as SAD or according to step seven Sadrags (sounds like one of the Dingles out of Emmerdale) is now a well-recognised condition, caused by lack of light on winter days. So, if you want to feel happy, it’s important to expose yourself in broad daylight as much as you can. But be careful where you do it and whatever you do, don’t wear a raincoat at the same time.

Step nine was to make lots of friends, and I can relate to this, because the way I see it, no one will notice aside from you if you don’t have any, whether you are happy or not. Having a close circle of friends they declare protects us against the ill effects of stress and it’s even been suggested that it can ward off germs. Not too close, I would have thought, especially where my particular set of friends are concerned, who are more often than not riddled with them.

Happiness researchers claim friendship has a much bigger effect on happiness than what you earn. One economist, Professor Oswald at Warwick University, devised a formula to work out how much extra cash we would need to make up for not having friends. The answer is £50,000.

Step ten, the final step, was to become a Hairdresser, preferably from Wimbledon if the laughter therapy sessions are anything to go by, although I would prefer to forget the rest and just go for the £50,000 pounds, in which case I’d be laughing all the way to the bank.

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